8. Underworld
Vinyl hefted her main bag onto one shoulder, and the smaller bag onto the other, before she picked up her satchel and carrier bag and headed out. There were times when she wondered if she could have chosen a lighter career.
It could be worse, she forced herself to think. I could be hauling around a cello.
It was only a short drive to the club, but once parked she had to drag her bags down a motley cluster of narrow streets and alleyways. The sun was setting, spilling fractured lines of gold down the alleys, punctuated by the shadows of angular street lights and billboards. The door to the club was set back from the street, at the bottom of a short flight of steps. The blue neon sign above the door reading Underworld was switched off, and the door was bolted shut, but she’d been told to expect this. She knocked on the door. After a minute of silence she knocked again.
“We open at nine!” shouted a woman from inside, muffled by the thick wood. She sounded posh, and more than a little annoyed.
“I’ve got an appointment!” she called back.
“Nobody told me about any appointments!” hollered the woman grumpily.
“I’m running your set tonight. It’s Vinyl Scratch!”
After a pause, the woman started slowly undoing the various locks holding the door in place. Eventually she pulled the door open and poked her head out. She was an older woman with blonde hair, warm brown skin and a sensible suit at odds with the venue. She looked Vinyl up and down critically.
“Really? You are?” she queried in a condescending tone. “I can’t say that you look the part.”
“Maybe not, but I sure sound it,” said Vinyl with significantly more confidence than she felt. A little swagger was part of the game, after all.
“Very well then, do follow me. We’ll check with ‘his lordship’.” She ushered Vinyl in, past the ticket booth and down the smooth brick stairs, securing the door firmly behind them.
The club was in the basement of a converted industrial building of some sort, with a lot of exposed pipes and brickwork worn down over the years. Torn posters adorned the walls unevenly, advertising acts of the past, some of them faded beyond recognition. At the bottom of the stairs she was led round a corner and through a door marked ‘Staff only’ into a messy lounge with a mismatched collection of seats mixed up with instruments, cables, speakers and other equipment.
“You can leave your stuff here for now,” said the woman, walking over to knock at another door. Vinyl gratefully slid the bags off her shoulders, setting them carefully down.
“What is it?” came a man’s voice from inside. It sounded rich, full of itself, and it made Vinyl cringe. She took a deep breath and reminded herself of why she was here.
“Somebody called, er, Viner...”
“Vinyl,” she corrected, “Vinyl Scratch.”
The door burst open. “Vinyl, darling!” The man was blond, with fair skin, a bright white suit and a big cheesy smile.
This is my big break, don’t screw it up, don’t screw it up. “Hi, Mister Blueblood. I’m all ready for my set tonight. Got the kit, the tunes, the duds, the works.” She indicated the various bags.
“And I’m expecting great things from you, sweetums,” he said in an infuriatingly familiar tone. “You’re here nice and early. There’ll be acres of time to set things up, so first, why don’t we take a stroll into my parlour and we’ll go over a few things. Harsh, honey, take five, I got this.”
The woman harrumphed as she headed out the door. “Just don’t do anything I’ll regret,” she muttered.
Blueblood guided Vinyl into the office with a hand pressed into the small of her back. She bit her cheek, suppressing a shudder and working to keep the irritation out of her eyes. He needs that hand, she reminded herself. I need him to have that hand so he can pay me, and write a letter of recommendation to the next club manager.
Blueblood’s office was even messier than the staff room. Papers were strewn across the two facing sofas, along with a stapler, a laptop, a hole punch, plates of half-eaten food and folders full of completely unsorted accounts, receipts, invoices, job applications and scribblings.
“Find a space, sit down,” he said with a wave as he shut the door. Vinyl reluctantly pushed a slew of paperwork aside, causing a minor landslide onto the floor. She felt dirty just touching it all, and wondered how he always managed to keep his shiny white suits immaculate when his room was in such a state. She suspected the answer involved too much money.
He shoved his laptop aside to sit opposite her, his expression turning serious.
“Okay, Scratch, last chance for you to back out of this. It’s...” – he glanced at his watch – “quarter to seven now. I can still get Sweetie Drops to cover your set if you don’t think you’re up for it.”
“I’m up for it. I promise.”
“Good to hear. But the competition set you did was only twenty minutes, and the preview last week was barely an hour. You did well, sure, but this is the real thing. It’s different. There’s more to keeping a crowd alive and kicking for that long. You can’t just keep playing the same thing, you have to...” – he waved his hands ambiguously as if that would help at all – “change it up, keep their attention, and stay on top of the mood of the room. It only takes one bad song to drive everyone off the floor.”
“I know. I got that, and I can totally do it. Don’t you worry.” And don’t you dare touch me again, you nasty little—
“Wonderful. The doors open at half eight. We’ll get Berryshine to do the opening set to about ten, then you take over for the rest of the night. That means you’ll be catching the office parties, but by midnight they’ll either have given up or got properly stuck in.”
Vinyl wasn’t listening to him, or looking at him any more. Her eyes were drawn to the brick wall behind him, which was… shimmering. It looked like sunlight caught the texture of the brick – except there was no sunlight down here. They were underground. Through a hundred little wavering points and patches of light, she caught snatches of daylight, colour and movement. The bright blue of sky, white of clouds, green of a rolling grass hillside, greenish brown of a tree trunk. She pieced the scene together from disconnected stars of detail, like a minimal impressionist painting come to life.
“Also it’s a Saturday so you’ll see some of the school crowd, but that tails off after eleven, about the same time the closing bar traffic files in.”
“Got it,” she said absently.
Moving through her barely glimpsed landscape was a figure. It was yellow and pink, vaguely four-legged with a big head. It was some sort of animal, she couldn’t quite tell what, but it had a familiar gait...
“One last thing, if you’re going to be a regular here, you’ll need a stage name. Berryshine uses the name Berry Punch when she’s on stage, and Sweetie Drops—”
“Pony,” said Vinyl without thinking.
“Really? Okay, you sound sure of it. I’ll introduce you as DJ Pony.”
Her eyes snapped back to him. What did I just agree to?
“How do you want to spell it?” He reached for a pad to scribble on. “Something ‘leet’, like Pone-three?”
“Er, sure. Yeah, that works.”
“Fabulous, I’ll mock up a title plate saying ‘PON-3’, and we can stick it on the projectors when your set starts. Now go set up your kit, and try not to mess with Berryshine’s stuff while you’re at it. She’s awfully possessive, and we don’t need any more bottles through the speakers.”
Vinyl was pretty good at this. She had the whole club rocking, and some well-placed changes in tempo had helped to break up the clusters and get the punters mingling. She knew she would, of course – this was her calling, her raison d’être, her true home – but there’d still been a degree of bravado in her promises earlier.
She spotted a few kids from school among the crowd: Rarity with her hair down and wearing plenty of diamonds. Flash Sentry and his band mates all playing air guitar. Tree Hugger wearing flowing green robes and doing her own thing to no discernible rhythm. Smarty Pants and Lemon Zest doing an intimate jive-like dance. Octavia in a tight little dress…
Tavi?!
Octavia was standing near the door at the far side of the room. She was wearing a slinky, shiny dark grey dress with horizontal bands that emphasised much more than it concealed. She wore a grim face, and hugged her arms, keeping her body closed. She kept moving behind objects and people, shielding herself, whether from the dance floor or from Vinyl’s vision. Her eyes darted about, as if she expected monsters to jump out from every corner.
What are you trying to pull, Tavi? Seriously, you’d stand out less if you turned up wearing nothing but a neon sign.
Vinyl nearly missed her next cue to keep the beat going, but managed to bluff it by quickly setting up a massive bass drop that had dancers whooping and doing silly things with their hair.
She waved the other DJ over. “Hey, Berry, do you mind covering for a minute?”
“Yeah, it’s rocking, right!” shouted Berryshine.
“No, I mean can you watch my set? Just for a couple of minutes!”
“Sure thing!” She made to head for the bar. “What are you drinking?”
Deciding that mime was the universal language of the deafened, Vinyl made an exaggerated motion of stepping away from the mixing deck and gesturing for Berryshine to take her place. She finally got the idea and took over.
Vinyl threaded her way through the crowd, hopping nimbly through, between and occasionally over the dancers. Octavia was staring intently at a patch of brick on the wall; she looked up at Vinyl as she approached, and staggered backwards, only saved from falling over backwards by hitting the wall.
“Tavi, what are you doing here?” Vinyl wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be pleased or worried.
Octavia hesitated before answering, “I… I wanted to see you, Vinyl. That is, I wanted to properly see you, here, where you’re in your element. Your true self. Not just the side of you I get to see outside.”
“Whoa, that’s nice of you, but you kind of look—”
Without warning, Octavia stepped forward and pressed her lips to Vinyl’s.
What the–?
Is she... she’s kissing me. She’s kissing me!
And that... kind of feels nice.
Is she drunk? She doesn’t smell drunk. And I should know. From right here. She smells of, uh, orange blossom? And tea. Damn it! No. Stop smelling. She’s my friend, I’m not supposed to be smelling her. Because smelling her is worse than kissing?
Should I step away? Should I push her away? Would that be rude? Should I hold her? Is being rude more important than… than letting her know how I feel?
How do I feel? This is Octavia, right? This is the girl whose sand castles I kicked down, who shared her lunch with me, who lent me pencils and, now that I think of it, never got them back. She’s my oldest friend. My most trusted friend.
My friend who has really, really soft lips. I mean, does she moisturise them, or what? How do you even get lips that soft?
Shit, stop, no, don’t think that!
How long has she felt this way about me? Does she actually…
But oh, wow, that feels nice. It’s all tingly and warm, and is that her tongue? How does she know how to do that?
And that’s her hand on my back. At least I hope it’s her hand, not some creep’s, but it’s a crowded club so I can’t be sure. Which, by the way, isn’t the most romantic place for this, and I’m the one who’s at home here. What possessed Tavi to do this here, of all places?
Is that her breasts pressing against me? I think so. I can’t really see from here, without turning my head away which I don’t want to do, but it must be. That dress she’s wearing is really tight. Like, I never really noticed before, but…
Gyaah! Don’t be distracted. This is important! You need to make a decision. You can’t just stand here, you need to...
Wait, don’t stop—
Octavia broke the kiss. She paused a moment, her lips hovering over Vinyl’s, then closed her mouth and took a step back. Her eyes were pained.
“I… uh… Tav… um…”
“I know, Vinyl. I could tell,” Octavia said as she wilted. She turned and walked away, up the stairs and out of the club.
Vinyl felt she was supposed to run after her, stop her, hold her, say something, anything. But what? What could she possibly say that wouldn’t somehow make things worse?
The most important thing had already been said.
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Wow
The walls seem thin in Blueblood's office, but I doubt Vinyl is going to register that now.
Yeah, there might be one of the exits in the club.
Also, poor Tavi.
Ouch. Poor 'Tavi
Interesting. I like Blueblood as a greasy club owner.
That's always a great moment to give up on someone. Right after kissing them.
this girl bags
ooh burn on Tavi
hell yeah! love that swagger
ah, so that was her! i was thinking one of the Manehattan ponies and trying to place her but yes very Harshwhinny
blegh \:(
yeah this tracks with what i've seen IRL
ooh portal to Equestria! portal to Equestria!
hehe nice nod to our multiply-named background ponies
haha nice twist that it wasn't Vinyl that came up with that spelling
ooh most curious!
hehe that's our background pony!
ooh i see where this is going!
no keep thinking that Vinyl!
aaaaaaa
aaaaaa
i really felt this. identify with Vinyl a bit too much here augh